The present invention relates to the mounting and testing of electrical devices, particularly computer disc drives, and provides a bay for the temporary reception and connection of such electrical devices facilitating their testing.
Disc drive testers require multiple test bays, up to 120 per test apparatus. Each test bay or fixture is designed to load, clamp and electrically connect a disc drive ready for testing. After the test process, the drive needs to be ejected and removed by the operator to be replaced by the next drive to be tested.
Conventionally, disc drives have been manually pushed into the bays of test apparatus and have been manually removed. However, different approaches to the problem have been explored including the use of a mechanical lever to drive a sliding carriage to unplug the drive for removal and in some cases to drive such a carriage engaging the drive over the last part of its motion to insert and plug in a drive.
In most cases, it is necessary to provide means for retaining the disc drive during the test. Unfortunately, different drives have required different retention devices to suit their individual design and there remains a need for a general purpose, easy to use test bay that is able to provide both mechanical assistance for the insertion and removal of the drive. There is also a need for test bays providing improved means for retaining drives for testing.
The problems addressed by the invention are not however limited to the testing of computer disc drives but arise in other contexts also.